Well here goes nothing! I wrote this about 5 years ago back when I was heavy into RP and otaku creation. I'd love to know what you think. ^^






Hoshi groped around in the darkness for the button that would shut off the deafening racket of the alarm clock. It was still dark out and the very sleepy part of herself told her it was too early and that it wasn’t natural to have to get up in the dark. Hoshi knew better. It was her second week at the Toshigami firm and if she wanted to get a good job when she got out of school, it was important to make a good impression. She sat up groggily rubbing her eyes as she grabbed her bathrobe and stumbled into the bathroom. Coming out a bit later feeling like a new person, she could see the first hints of sunrise. Her father was still sleeping. He had the luxury of working at home on most days unless there was an important meeting. Yoshiro was a computer programmer, and you could do that from just about anywhere if you were good, which he was.

Dressed now in a long skirt and a pressed shirt she set off for the office, her briefcase under her arm. It was summer break, and she was sure at least one of her friends would be lounging at the beach, but at least she would be in the air conditioning. Walking down the street she took big gulps of the fresh morning air and observed the houses she passed. She liked to imagine what was going on in each house right at this very minute.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught a small withered face out of an upstairs window. A hand raised to slowly wave. She turned and gave a casual wave back. This had gone on every morning for the past few weeks and it sent shivers down her spine every time. The problem was, the house was abandoned, and the elderly man had been dead for two months of a heart attack. The newspapers say he was found right by that window where he used to like to wave and greet the neighbors. At first she had doubted her own eyes but with the constant reappearance, she couldn’t be so sure. Okay Hoshi, she told herself, so you see ghosts. Doesn’t everyone have their own quirks and peculiarities?, she asked herself. Oh who am I kidding, I just hope I’m not going nuts. She sighed as she opened the door to the office.

The faint clickety-clack of thirty office keyboards being typed on echoed softly throughout the room. Hoshi paused, taking a sip of her morning coffee while glancing at the screen. This was her first internship and she had just finished her junior year in high school. “Morning Hoshi!”, one of her co-workers said greeting her cheerfully holding her own cup of fresh coffee. Things were certainly looking up, a job for the summer with a top notch computer firm, new friends, and even a few weeks off before school starts again. She leaned back in her chair and smiled to herself. As her eyes fell back to her work, she caught the photo she had placed there of her and her father. He always called her his little star. “Hoshi”, he used to say, “I named you Star because you fell straight out of heaven into my life.” She had replaced a deep loss that only her father could understand…his wife. He would only tell her that she was beautiful and that she died in childbirth. Hoshi hoped she made him proud.

And just as she focused on her computer screen, there was a crash as something came through the front glass-paned doors. Something was the only description Hoshi could think of. It was tall, gangly, fast, had vines running down its arms and was decidedly not human. She rubbed her eyes thinking it was a figment of her sleep deprived morning mind but it was still there. Not only was it still there but it was now climbing over the cubicles, throwing out vines to capture her coworkers. “What the…”, she said in fright as a thick vine-like tentacle lashed out and nearly caught her on the arm, crashing into her monitor instead. That was enough to finally jar her into action.

She jumped over her chair and ran towards the other end of the office. There was screaming, a lot of it but it was dying down slowly. Her hip slammed into a door. The bathroom door. Quickly her fingers punched the combo without even looking and the door opened. She dove into the bathroom slamming and locking the heavy wooden door behind her. Hoshi ran breathlessly into a stall and leaned up against the tiles, her heart pounding and her head spinning.

Hoshi closed her eyes tight and willed it all to go away. It was too unbelievable. Hearing more crashes, she jumped up and began frantically looking for some sort of weapon. She grabbed a plunger in shaking hands and stepped towards the bathroom door. Opening it a crack to see if perhaps it had all been a hallucination, she caught sight of one of the older women just as one of the vines wrapped around her, causing her to scream. “Oh no!”, she said as she slipped out holding her plunger as if it were a sword as she ran to check on the older woman to make sure she was alright. “This is just a hallucination. I must be dreaming.”, she tried to tell herself repeatedly, because to accept this as reality was to go completely gibberingly insame.

She climbed under a table, pulling the elderly woman under with her. As she was checking her over, the "hallucination" chose that moment to lash out again snapping the table in two right overhead and causing wood splinters to rain down on the two of them. Suddenly, a vine reached out and grabbed the woman right out from under Hoshi’s arms. Hoshi screamed and jumped to her feet just as the monster decided to change gears and go for the moving target, herself. Torn between trying to do something for the woman, and getting out of harms way, the fact was decided as the supposed hallucination threw a large piece of desk at her and began to approach. The desk partition slammed into her shoulder causing her to cry out and Hoshi ran for safety. She ran back to the bathroom and again locked the door behind her. Moving in as far as she could go to the furthest stall she sank to the floor sobbing hysterically and wrapping her arms around the plunger.

Suddenly a female voice sounded, “Ahem”. Hoshi whirled about to see a little girl of about 5 years, transparent, and sticking half way out of the mosaic tiled wall of the restroom. Her dress was simple, a little flowered frock, socks, white sneakers, and her hair was in twin pigtails. Her blue eyes locked on Hoshi’s brown ones. “Oh no! Not now! Not again!”, she said holding her head. “Not another ghost!”. There was the old man down the street that still rocked in his rocking chair upstairs even after his death certificate said he couldn’t, and the little boy on the second floor of her school….”God, I don’t have time for this right now.”, she said half sobbing, and almost on the verge of screaming. Had the world completely turned upside-down?

“Actually, I think now would be best.”, the girl spoke in a voice beyond her apparent years.

“W..who are you?”, Hoshi asked feeling even more like she had fallen down the rabbit hole. Where’s the white rabbit now, she asked herself, and the Mad Hatter?

“Oh, my name is Athena. I don’t know your name, nor does it matter, but if you’re the person I’m looking for, you will be able to take this.” She held out a silver watch, transparent and ghost-like just like she was. She even passed it through the wall a few times to prove her point before holding it out, dangling it by the wrist-band from her hand.

The door’s about to come in and she wants me to try to take a wristwatch from a ghost? Hoshi was incredulous. Everyone knew you couldn’t touch a ghost. It was in all the movies. You pass right through them. “Are you serious? You want me to play catch the bauble when there’s a monster ready to tear down the door and do who knows what with me? Fine, if you’ll go away and take that other thing with you!”, she said with a touch of panic in her voice. She reached out and wrapped her fingers around the band of the watch and slowly closed them on it. She pulled her hand away expecting to have nothing, but when she opened her hand, there was the watch and it was solid. Hoshi was so startled she almost dropped it. Just then, the door finally caved in with a loud splintering roar.

As the door caved, Hoshi screamed in terror, realizing she was trapped and would probably die at the hands of that…thing. In her fright, she managed to fumble and drop the plunger, which clattered, loudly to the floor.

“Put it on now!”, the girl told her, her voice urgent.

Hoshi slipped the watch on, acting without even thinking anymore at this point. Logic clearly was already out the window.

“Now I need you to say ‘Ether Cosmos Power Make Up!’ quickly now!” Athena yelled, afraid it might be too late and the youma would grab the girl before she could henshin.

The youma was completely in the doorway now and a vine snapped out reaching for Hoshi’s neck. She was completely frozen in fear, so afraid in fact, that she didn’t even question what the ghostly 5 year old told her to say, she just parroted it off quickly like a mantra or a prayer of protection against evil. “Ether Cosmos Power Make Up!”

Suddenly, it was as if she were becoming someone else. The surroundings seemed to fade out replaced by a vast space and swirling colors. She found herself in a short black skirt with a light gray bow in the front, short sleeves, and black heels. There was very little time to examine herself however. Almost on instinct she sidestepped as a vine came snapping out to grab her, missing by inches. “What are you!”, Hoshi cried in alarm.

Athena stepped back as the youma took another step closer and threw out another vine. This was closer than she had wanted. If only I could have found her a bit earlier…but this will have to work, she thought. “Now hurry! You have to attack now. Say the first thing that comes to mind!”, Athena cried out.

The first thing that comes to mind…., she thought. “I want to go home!”, she said and even as she said it, a thought was rising up from the depths of her mind almost as if it was something long forgotten that she had been reminded of. The vine was two inches from her face when she heard herself saying, “Ether Gravity Wave!”, almost as if from afar. She had brought her hands up to protect her face from the flying vine, but now a force seemed to pulse from her palms. She watched as the very air in front of her rippled like an invisible wave and traveled out to the creature. Her eyes opened wide in surprise as the undulating wave reached the monster and actually threw it backwards across the room, landing with a smash on top of several cubicles. She covered her mouth with her hand in shock. “Did I….do that?”, she asked in almost a whisper.

“Yes you did and not a moment too soon but there’s no time to explain. That is a youma sent to find you and it is very much not dead so be ready!”, Athena nearly yelled the last part as the youma began to get up letting out a high pitched shriek of rage.

Hoshi stepped out of the small bathroom to get a little moving room, though moving toward that…youma, scared her to bits. Still there was no point in being trapped in there. Now that she could get a better look at it, it looked more plant than human rather stalk like with hands that could shoot tendrils like vines. It was disentangling itself from the broken cubicle and soon it would be coming at her again. Well, I’m not going to give it a chance this time, she thought. Willing herself to ignore the voice of fear in the back of her mind that told her to just run away, she ran at the creature. Jumping into the air at the last minute she drop kicked the youma back into the broken shards of desk and then pushing off she cartwheeled back a few feet. Hey, that was pretty neat, she remarked just as the thing screamed out and lashed at her with a vine, catching her around the ankle and pulling her to the floor.

“Yeeeaaah! Let go!”, she yelled as she was dragged along the floor towards the towering thing. Apparently delighted with itself, it chuckled as it swung her across the room into the opposing wall with a thud. Pain erupted through her shoulder as it met the wall and tears came to her eyes. This was just too much, monsters, a ghost girl, all this outright weirdness, and now she was in pain to boot. It was just too much to comprehend. Only an hour ago she had been sitting at her desk working on a program, as normal as can be.

“Sailor Ether!”, Athena called out phasing through the wall. “Are you all right? Hurry hit him again!”, she called out, wringing her hands in concern.

At first Hoshi almost didn’t realize the ghostly girl was talking to her but somehow the name rang true in her mind. Running on sheer adrenaline now she climbed to her feet just as another vine wrapped around her waist and tried to lift her into the air. She yelled and grabbed for a table, but came away only with only one leg broken off of the corner. Holding her makeshift club now she began swinging wildly, missing most of the time due to the distance. The youma squeezed tighter and tighter, making it nearly impossible to breathe. Her chest burning, Hoshi took another tactic. Instead of trying to stab the youma, she stabbed thw table leg into the vines holding her aloft, the wood cutting into the tough green skin.

Athena cried out in shock. It’s going to kill her!, she thought but was unsure what she would be able to do about it. She called out again, “Sailor Ether!” Seeing what the girl was trying to do, Athena smiled. “clever girl”, she said still quite concerned but pleased nonetheless at her ward’s quick thinking.

The youma yelled out in pain, a shrill high pitched sound that sent ice cold shivers down Hoshi’s spine. Instinctively she put her hands to her ears as the youma dropped her from its grip. She landed on the floor hard and gasping for breath as the youma reared back for another go. Hoshi caught sight of the little girl who was now phased halfway through a desk. Anger welled up within her. She might be a bit mild mannered, but by no means was she a pincushion. Her expression hardened a bit and as the youma launched a very pointy vine at her, she ran under it closing in on the actually body of the youma launching herself into the air and slamming her table leg as hard as she could into what might have approximated as the thing’s stomach.

The youma recoiled in surprise, doing what was natural. It wrapped its vines around itself and the wound letting out another screech. Hoshi found herself wrapped up in a cocoon of youma vines, shoved up against its body with hardly any room to move. She could not see past the entwined greenness of the vines and she was running out of air as she struggled, causing the vines only to wrap tighter. She could hear muffled cries from the little phantom girl in the room but could not make out the words. “Help!”, she tried to scream but there wasn’t enough air for screaming. Sparkles of oxygen deprivation started to appear at the corners of her eyes as the youma realized what it had and squeezed tighter still. A phrase suddenly came to mind. God helps those who help themselves. It was something she had heard in church once, not that she went often. There was only one thing left for her to do, and even that seemed like grasping at straws because she wasn’t even sure it even happened the first time. Taking in the last of the oxygen in one gulp she closed her eyes and screamed “Ether Gravity Wave!”, with all of her emotion bubbling up from within, all the fear, anger, confusion, and desperation pouring into those few words.

Athena was screaming at this point. In her mind the seconds counted down as nothing was seen or heard outside of the cocoon the youma had made with its arms. There was no response to her calls and time kept marching on second by second killing her hope slowly. “No…Ether….no not again…I didn’t even learn her name this time…”, she whispered clutching her hands together prayer-style. Memories flashed before her eyes clouding her view of the room. Suddenly the room began to waver, expanding and contracting in wave-like ripples, and then there was a feeling almost like an explosion, and a pop as the room exploded outward and then settled back to it’s original shape. The youma, or the few pieces that were left, were strewn on the floor and disappearing. The girl who was now Sailor Ether was also sprawled on the floor, out cold.

Athena ran over and let out a sigh of relief as she could hear the girl breathing. A few loose strands of wavy black hair rose and fell on her chest. Kneeling down, her pigtails floating in front of her face, Athena nudged the girl. Of course to anyone else, her hand would have just passed through having no effect. In this case though her hand met resistance, shimmering slightly where they made contact. “Sailor Ether, wake up!”, she whispered urgently.

There’s that name again, Hoshi said to herself, her thoughts drifting lazily by, swirling around in waves of confusion. Where do I know that name, she wondered as recollection of the past hour suddenly slammed its way back into her mind. Why does she keep calling me that anyway? “My name….is Hoshi.”, she managed as she slowly opened her eyes to find herself on the ground with Athena’s young rounded face staring right at her.

Athena smiled as the girl came to. “Well then it’s nice to meet you Hoshi.”, she said standing up to give Hoshi some space. It looked like for once, things might be looking up. Perhaps they did have a ghost of a chance.

I love it, makes me intrigued on what happened in the past and why she see's ghosts.